Wikipedia:Featured article review/Augustan drama/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed by User:Joelr31 00:49, 11 November 2008.

Review commentary

 * Users notified: Geogre, NicholasTurnbull; also notified WP Theatre.

This article fails 1c and 2c of Featured article criteria


 * Criteria 1(c) factually accurate: claims are verifiable against reliable sources, accurately represent the relevant body of published knowledge, and are supported with specific evidence and external citations; this requires a "References" section in which sources are listed, complemented by inline citations where appropriate;

Although there is a list of References at the bottom of the article, they are not specific to statements claimed. I do not want to add fact tags, but I can if that would be helpful, as for me some of the statements seem to be personal opinion or the opinion of a particular group, but not necessarily representative of various opinions given their due weight as in NPOV. The article can be seen as a scholarly essay representing a particular view or evaluation of the subject of the article. There are no critical or alternative views or evaluations available?


 * Criteria 2c: :consistent citations—where required by Criterion 1c, consistently formatted inline citations using either footnotes or Harvard referencing (Smith 2007, p. 1) (see citing sources for suggestions on formatting references; for articles with footnotes, the meta:cite format is recommended).

Although there are a couple of inline citations (e.g. (IV 55–60), (Pasquin IV i.)), it fails the specific 2c criteria. In FAC these days, full referencing is consistently required by reviewers to allow readers to check sources for themselves for accuracy and POV. This prevents "common knowledge" of a particular point in time from being accepted as scholarly fact in later years. Further, all quotations should be specifically referenced. &mdash; Mattisse (Talk) 13:32, 9 October 2008 (UTC)


 * P.S. I gather from some of the comments below that this article is WP:OWN and that other editors agree to protect the ownership of this article. If this is the case, my request will not be taken seriously and will be ridiculed and ignored (as seems to be the case from some of the comments below.) Still, I am surprised that a single editor can control an article, my surprise proving that I am not as cynical about Wikipedia as I thought I was. To say "I don't want to turn the article into something Geogre did not intend it to be" suggests that articles are not allowed to evolve from a single editor's point of view because of article ownership. This seems to me against the ethos of Wikipedia, but hey, I now know Wikipedia does not uphold its own values. I still have time to grow more cynical.  &mdash; Mattisse  (Talk) 09:28, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
 * There are different flavours of WP:OWN. This is one of the milder ones, in my view, but I wouldn't disagree with you that there are such issues. The problem is where does the line get drawn? If Ceoil and Ottava come up with an article acceptable to all, would that address your WP:OWN concerns? Or would it move the concerns from one person to three? Also, FA-status is sometimes used to justify reverting to an earlier version of an article. Sometimes that is fully justified, but at other times that attitude (another form of WP:OWN) can hinder progress. In either case, a permalink to the current version of the article can always be used for people wanting to refer to that. Maybe not ideal, but if I ever built up a stable of articles that I wanted to keep a permanent record of, I would take a snapshot of what they looked like at their "best" moment (i.e. the permalink - though remember that changes to templates can ruin the appearance of older versions of an article) and then allow a "different" version to evolve (keeping NPOV and article quality in mind - the article quality and balance mustn't deteriorate, even if the style of presentation might change). Carcharoth (talk) 12:37, 11 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep: I can't see that either of the claims made above are accurate. Firstly, criterion 1c indicates that inline citations are only necessary "where appropriate"; following that link reveals that the requirement applies to "direct quotes and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged"; I can see nothing in the article that is controversial in the slightest. No indication is given above as to which "statement claimed" is meant. The criteria 2c turns on the evaluation of appropriateness in 1c, which I do not believe has been established. The references offer both primary and secondary sources and the article is well-written, detailed and scholarly. DionysosProteus (talk) 19:57, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment The topic is broad enough that it could easily be cited by a non-expert (as apposed to A Tale of a Tub, which required very specific knowledge). A couple of editors could bring this to the current standard in a week or two, if anybody is interested in helping rather than shooting. Ceoil  sláinte 20:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. No infobox.  Also various incorrect commas, and missing dashes.   -- Disinfoboxman (talk) 20:35, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree Wetman. In addition I would like the lead to cover its effect on popular culture; I'm thinking here of the many video games, Simpsons edisodes and death metal songs that mention the legacy of Maffei tragedy. Ceoil  sláinte 20:46, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Ceoil, I rely on you for so much and thus hate to ask, but...are you up for this one? You know the game: one week or three months, FAR doesn't mind. Ya, we could just sit here shooting but it gets awful dull two years on. Marskell (talk) 12:40, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't want to turn the article into something Geogre did not intend it to be; so i'll sandox a cited vesrion on my user space, ask Geogre to vet, and we'll take it from there. Its likely to be a long one though Marskel; warning you up front; but I think is worth it. Ceoil  sláinte 00:35, 11 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep - if someone wants to put together a list of specific lines that should have citations, please give it to me and I will address them after discussing it with Geogre. Ceoil, I have quite a few of the books that can be relied on. I never added them before out of respect towards Geogre. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:44, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, if Ottava would lend a hand, I take this on. Ceoil  sláinte 09:51, 11 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment - some of the quotes are not clearly referenced:
 * "Addison, damning opera's heterogeny, wrote, "Our Countrymen could not forbear laughing when they heard a Lover chanting out a Billet-doux, and even the Superscription of a Letter set to a Tune."" - this might be pinned down from the earlier sentence: "In The Spectator, both in number 18 and the 3 April 1711 number, and many places elsewhere, Joseph Addison fretted that foreign opera would drive English drama from the stage altogether.", but whether the quote in question is from one of the 1711 Spectators or one of the "many places elsewhere" is not clear.
 * Ceoil has given a ref here, but the date given is 1853, by which time both Steele and Addison were dead. So I'm still unclear as to what this is - a republication of something in or by the Spectator? Or someone (who?) quoting Steele and Addison? Carcharoth (talk) 12:43, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Carcharoth, I'm not familiar with the topic, and the ref was from Google books. This is why it might be better if we sandbox, and, although Ottava has more knowledge, ask for Geogre to review before we taking to mainspace. You input aswell in this would be very much appreciated. Ceoil  sláinte 13:48, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
 * There is also: "John Gay wrote to Jonathan Swift on 3 February 1723, "There's nobody allow'd to say I sing but an Eunuch or an Italian Woman. Every body is grown now as great a judge of Musick as they were in your time of Poetry & folks that could not distinguish one tune from another now daily dispute over different Styles of Handel, Bononcini, and Aitillio. People have now forgot Homer, and Virgil & Caesar...." ". Here, it would be nice to be able to follow this up in (presumably) a collection of the Letters of John Gay (or of Swift). But to do that, we need to know where the quote and letter has been published.
 * The "Spectator" link in the References section is broken. New link should be http://meta.montclair.edu/spectator/. Would be nice if a specific page from there was located for the Addison quote above. I initially thought it was an archive for Spectator issues, but I now see it is a single article.
 * That's what I spotted when checking the referencing of the quotes. Carcharoth (talk) 05:20, 11 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment - Currently, the references in the bibliography cannot possibly cover the claims made in the article - most of the references are primary sources. Sadly, the bibliography does not even reference the most important scholarly works on Augustan drama. I see that Ottava has agreed to do some referencing for this article - that is excellent and I look forward to its improvement. Awadewit (talk) 11:22, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

FARC commentary

 * Suggested FA criteria concern is referencing (1c). Marskell (talk) 14:18, 25 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Remove. Agree with above comments by, and also by , as related to the current state of this article with regard to current WP:FA standards. Not much has been done to address these concerns since the WP:FAR started. Cirt (talk) 17:29, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Remove - Currently, this article does not meet 1c. Its lack of inline citations does meet the current FA practice (one's opinion of this convention is irrelevant) and its list of references does not adequately cover the material in the article, making it even harder for readers to verify the information. Awadewit (talk) 17:38, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Remove 1c. For example, the statement "King George I referred to himself as Augustus" caught my eye because, having written the article on George I, I fancy myself as the George I expert on-wiki. I'd never heard that before. Unfortunately, I was unable to find mention of it in the six books on early eighteenth-century English drama in which I looked. If everything in the article is commonplace, it would not be so difficult to verify it. DrKiernan (talk) 14:29, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.